PUBLISHED October 27th, 2013 11:07 pm | UPDATED July 25th, 2024 03:20 pm
“Does it hurt?” asks eight-year-old Kayleen when she meets classmate, Doug, in the school sick bay. He rode his bike off the school roof and she is suffering from stomach pains. Over the next 30 years we glimpse the pair in A&E departments, bedrooms, and mental hospitals as their paths cross but never quite connect. It is love at first sight for Kayleen (Seong Hui Xuan – Pangdemonium’s Rabbit Hole) and Doug (Alan Wong – The MTV Show). But they don’t realize that yet as they are only eight years old and what fascinates them about each other is that they’re both twisted little souls (although this is not obvious from the outset).
Theatre company Pangdemonium has presented Singapore audiences with ‘Rabbit Hole’ and ‘Next To Normal’ this year. Gruesome Playground Injuries by US playwright Rajiv Joseph is their third production. It’s hardly your typical saccharine-sweet romance where boy meets girl as children and they fall in love and form a bond, which lasts a lifetime. The premise of this ‘anti-rom com’ is that we can quite literally map our lives by our scars. So, we follow Doug and Kayleen over the course of 30 years – mostly in emergency rooms or other places with sickbeds. Joseph doesn’t present the relationship between these two protagonists straightforwardly; so be prepared for a time span that stretches from the ages to 8 to 38 and action that jumps backward and forward, over five-year increments.
You might call Doug accident prone, but maybe self-harming might be a more appropriate label for someone who climbs telephone poles during thunderstorms and likes playing with fireworks. Kayleen is clearly a damaged child but just how much and how she got that way is revealed as the play goes along.
Gruesome Playground Injuries is very much an ‘actors” play as the two actors have to differentiate the different ages of the characters subtly with no gimmicks. Director Tracie Pang says, ‘Doug is full of life and love, funny, reckless and is a force of nature; Kayleen is much more of a mystery, hiding deep dark secrets, and struggling with her own demons. When they are together it’s magic, but it’s like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. The challenge for both actors is to tread that very fine balance between comedy and drama as the story progresses, and also to play their characters from the age of 8 to 38, with all the nuances of youth and innocence, to age and experience. Plus there is the small issue of blood…’
Rajiv Joseph is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and an award-winning playwright. He wrote Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (a 2010 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), Huck and Holden, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Animals Out of Paper, The Monster at the Door, and The North Pool. He is currently a writer on the Showtime television series Nurse Jackie.
Don’t miss the chance to catch Gruesome Playground Injuries! There’s the extra bonus of a chance to win a trip for 2 Adults to Bali – staying 4D3N at Club Med Bali worth SGD$3,340! For package and competition details see here.
Gruesome Playground Injuries is on at the Esplanade Theatre Studio from 31 October to 10 November 2013. Please visit www.sistic.com.sg for ticketing details.
Pictures courtesy of Pangedmonium.